Tuesday, October 06, 2009

State of the Ark (part 2)

As I said in an earlier blog, "state of the ark" is my phrase for when I think I am on the leading edge of technology when in fact I'm back among the late majority or laggards.

One of the problems with playing a Dobro all by yourself is that the instrument is really suited to provide accents and solo snippets. But I'd look a bit stupid standing in my den tapping my foot doing nothing then occasionally playing a "twinky twang."

So I thought I should get some bluegrass CDs so I could get used to playing in the context of a band. If you need a visualization, see this classic Andy Kaufmann bit from SNL.

I decided to go to Amazon.com to look at what was available. I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be cool if when you bought albums online, you could actually hear bits of each track?" What a great, innovative idea. I could get RICH!!!!!

So, how long has Amazon been doing that, and why haven't I taken advantage of it before?

We probably don't think of music clips as user assistance, but this feature helped me make an informed choice (Patty Loveless, Mountain Soul II), and that's the ultimate goal of UA.

1 comment:

The track previews remind me of the listening stations at record stores (when we still had record stores). Remember those? It's a good example of taking something that worked in the physical world and making a virtual version of it for the web world.